


Forged in Fire and Ice

by summers_honey_breath



Category: God of War (Video Games), God of War 2018
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Ancient Greek Customs, Ancient Scandinavia - Freeform, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dialogue Heavy, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fantasy, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, God of War (2018), Greek Mythology - Freeform, Internal Monologue, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Romance, Smut, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 13:34:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18367055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summers_honey_breath/pseuds/summers_honey_breath
Summary: Laufey the Just happens upon a strange, ash-skinned warrior in the woods she calls home: a man of great strength with divinity in his blood.  Taking him in, she tends to his wounds and seeks to learn his purpose in Midgard and whence he came.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Might change the rating depending on later chapters.

By the gods, cruel and benevolent, he was a warrior most fierce, felling enemies left and right, a reaper at harvest-time. Laufey would have been content to study him, were they not in the midst of battle. Thus she nocked an arrow and imbued the tip with ice, and with a cry loosed it, the shaft striking home in an ember-filled orbit. Her quarry joined a pile of its brethren.  
A fireball came hurtling down and the warrior dodged it, unfazed. When the horde descended upon the wooded dell, he smote them with blades of flame and iron. “Jöphie!” said Laufey. The gyrfalcon wheeled towards the draugr upon the hill, talons out. At the abomination’s scream, she threw Leviathan with all her might. The great-axe forged a prison of ice; an arrow shattered it.  
Thereupon the warrior pivoted and swung at a Revenant. “Hold, stranger!” said Laufey. “It is much too swift for your blades!” She sent a trio of arrows soaring, stunning the un-witch. With a snarl, the warrior pounced, tore the Revenant from its noxious green cloud and snapped its neck.  
“It is over,” he said.  
“So it would seem.” Laufey prowled over to him. “If you’ve come to fight me, stranger, I sincerely doubt either of us would come out of it alive.”  
“Fight you?” Bald and bearded, with skin of ash and features granite-hewn, he seemed the sort to strike fear in all who beheld him. Indeed, there was no softness to the man, nothing but cruelty in the golden eyes and spare, chapped lips. Tattoos like blood smears dripped down the left side of his face, followed the curve of his skull and spine, stained the length of his muscle-bound trunk.  
“Have you come to fight me or not, stranger?” said Laufey. “Are you friend or foe?”  
“No. And neither.”  
“Not much for words, are you? Very well. Tell me your name and I shall tell you mine. I did help you, after all.”  
“Kratos.”  
“I see that you are wounded, Kratos, and almost certainly lost. I am called Faye. If you wish, I can take you to my home and see to those injuries. Don’t want you bleeding out and ruining the landscape, do we?”  
The warrior went positively rigid.  
“You need not come just now. Jöphie likes to hunt hereabouts. If I ask it of her, she may lead you once you’ve swallowed your pride. Your choice.” Glossy sable braids swayed as she turned around. Marching off, she began to sing. It was enough to make him follow.  
Her voice resounded through the forest, high above the white-crowned trees, and to the heavens beyond. Hers was the music of days of yore, of battles lost and won, of heartbreak and happiness in equal measure. She sang in an ancient tongue—a near-dead tongue, but for two souls left in the world who could speak it.  
They kept to paths of snow, dead leaves, and loam, encompassed by boulders and trees on either side. It was nigh spring and the air, though bitterly cold, was sweet and fresh with the promise of burgeoning life. One could almost taste it.  
Laufey sang all the way home. Upon arrival, she pushed through the gate with one last high, unearthly note and cast a look over her shoulder. “You are welcome here, stranger, so long as you deport yourself accordingly,” she said.  
“I understand,” he said.

Kratos slumped into a chair and she set to work. There was as much power in him as ferocity; for he was no ordinary warrior, no ordinary man. Through his veins coursed the blood of the divines.  
Yet his was not the blood of the Aesir, nor even that of the Vanir. Indeed, of all the Nine Realms, he seemed a stranger to them all. A stranger, to whom a poultice seemed of little use. Who was he, this Kratos?  
Laufey wondered whether he sensed such otherness in her—she a Frost Giant, one of the Jötnar, the last of her kind in Midgard, save the World Serpent. Perhaps that was what compelled her to receive him favorably.  
Or was it mere curiosity? A fool’s feeling but one she could not resist. He did not seem a threat, despite his coarse nature.  
Spirals of pink and blue and purple, flecked with stars, washed over the burns on his legs and side. Laufey did not conceal her magic—not when she fought, nor when she healed. Her knowledge of the latter had been a gift from Freya, one she wielded it with pride. “All right?” she said, swathing his bicep in a poultice of yarrow and calendula. He winced but made no complaint.  
“All right,” he said.  
A spirit of inquiry seized Laufey as she examined the bandages, which lay beneath his gauntlets. The strips of cloth were ragged, yellow-brown with age. Blood—the blood of years long since past—stained them. An affront to her penchant for cleanliness. “Shall I change these?” she said.  
“You shall not,” he said.  
“Then shall you stay for supper?”  
“I shall abide by the rules of hospitality, which I have observed in these parts.”  
“You say that as if they were expected. Are there such rules whence you came?”  
“Whence I came it is known as xenia. Guest-friendship. I…” Kratos fumbled around his belt and drew a small knife from its sheath. “I have no needs for you to attend. Not any longer. You have offered me food, shelter, and protection. For that I am grateful. It is now my obligation to give.”  
“I would ask nothing of you, Kratos,” said Laufey, turning the knife in her palm; the blade was keen and sliced her skin deep. A fine weapon. “But I won’t spurn a warrior’s—or a guest’s—benefaction. You have my thanks. Shall we feast now, in wake of this cultural exchange?”  
“We shall.”  
Laufey’s winter stores never ran dry; she hunted throughout the year—so long as the woods saw fit to yield game—and she lived alone. From the larder, she pulled dried venison and fish, which she heaped upon wooden plates. Around the meat, she tucked dried cloud-berries, hunks of cheese, flatbread, and honey-sweetened hazelnuts. Kratos was a man monstrous in size; his appetite was surely no different.  
She set mugs of mead, empty cups, and a pitcher of buttermilk on the table. “Eat, drink, make merry, guest-friend,” she said. “You must be starving.” He did not need prompting.  
The warrior’s silence vexed her. Freya, dear Frigg, remained one of Laufey’s true friends—if not her only friend—and the goddess lacked neither words nor the inspiration to guide them. But upon the whole, silence was Laufey’s day to day.  
Kratos had not spoken for the whole of her preparations; and while it was true that the man owed her nothing, conversation would have been preferable to a knife.  
She sensed, however, that she would draw nothing from him by means of force.  
So silence it was, and silence it would be. For now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will likely be a short story but I'm just winging it and having fun for now! Feedback and comments are always appreciated. I'm always editing words/phrasing like the nitpicky little wench I am.

He accepted her offer to spend the night and took the bearskin before the hearth, despite her protests. “The rules of hospitality in any land dictate that you should have my bed,” she said, piling furs onto the mattress.  
“I am accustomed to sleeping rough,” he said. “There is warmth in here where there is none outside. It is enough.”  
He spoke the obvious, yet somehow it seemed necessary, almost not enough for him; it seemed as though he might not believe something was real unless it could be proved or demonstrated. A story was there. She would not ask.  
In the morning, Laufey was not surprised by his absence. Another stranger, another traveler come and gone. It was just as well.  
Bow in hand, axe on her back, she made her way out of doors. Jöphie, circling high above, let out a piercing cry.  
So the stranger had not left after all, though he was nowhere near at hand. For the moment, it was not Laufey’s concern.  
Past the protective stave around her forest, through cave and dell, over hill and boulder, she made for the tangle of vines that concealed Freya’s dwelling, whereupon she snatched up a fistful of sand and pitched it at the mass. Whorls of pink, purple, and orange parted them and dispersed, revealing an archway. Laufey followed trails lined with red-leafed birches, her boots stroked by tall, yellow grasses and azure blooms. Freya’s giant, tree-bearing tortoise was already standing in the dale. “Is this about the stranger?” said the goddess. Their tattooed arms entwined, Laufey nodded.  
“You’ve seen him?”  
“Only in passing. Only from afar, since I kept myself hidden. Come inside and tell me more.”  
Laufey abandoned her weapons to the threshold. The round cabin beneath the tortoise was warm and suffused with golden light. “I found him battling a horde of draugr and came to his aid, though he seemed not to need it,” she said, tossing two rabbits onto the stave for them to skin. “I’ll admit, it was curiosity, not altruism, that drove me to intervene. He was wounded, though, and after the fight, I brought him to my home to tend to his injuries…but it was the strangest thing, Frigg. The tissue regenerated far faster than that of any mortal. Yes, I don’t believe for a moment that he’s mortal—or from any of the Nine Realms.”  
“If he speaks one of Midgard’s tongues, he’ll have been here for a while,” said Freya, thinking aloud. “What’s his name?”  
“Kratos. Do you know, he stayed the night and barely spoke more than three words at a time?” Laufey’s fawn-colored, generously freckled cheeks warmed at the implication. “That is to say, he is taciturn. Truth be told, I don’t quite know what to make of him. He’s a strange one. Dressed like anyone else in Midgard but completely bald, shaven, with tattoos such as I have never seen, like blood painted on moon-pale skin. And his blades, Frigg. I have never seen such blades before—imbued with fire and so strangely wrought. They are wicked-looking, chained and evil, as if formed by a curse but offered in deceit as a gift. Did you happen to catch a glimpse?”  
“Only when they were sheathed. But I felt a great, dark power emanating from them and the bow he carries—from him, too.” The goddess ground up some herbs with her mortar and pestle, infused them with magic.  
The Jötunn wondered if her friend ever went a day without concocting something. Like Laufey, she lived in mostly self-imposed seclusion. What use had she for such things?  
Yet perhaps it was the same as Laufey with her flute and lyre. There was no one around to hear her play or sing—save Freya, dear Frigg—but Laufey’s thirst for company was often sated by music, sounds to fill the empty hours and spaces. Yes, perhaps that was it.  
Freya’s next words, however, gave the Jötunn pause. “I’m almost certain he’s a god. But just in case, have him drink this and return the cup to me. Or, better yet, bring him here—or at least in close proximity. If he becomes suspicious or belligerent I can wipe his mind. You have my mark; I can give it to him as well, if he proves trustworthy, keep him hidden from the Aesir. But I can’t be sure whether he’s a danger to you until I know what he is.”  
“I can handle myself, Frigg. You know this. Whatever his origins, he is no danger to me.”  
“You don’t want to know what he is, _who_ he is? Alright, then, so if he’s not a danger to you, what of the rest of Midgard? I may loathe being shut out of Vanaheim, stripped of my freedom, thanks to Odin…” Freya’s gaze went to her window, the magical view of her homeland. “My good-for-nothing, warmongering husband. But the people here? You know I care for them, Faye, even if none of them know me. And I know you feel the same.”  
“Even so, I no longer constantly go out of my way to help them. Nor should you.” Laufey tied the rabbit pelts to her belt and set about cooking the meat, stoking up the fire in the hearth. “I help whoever crosses my path, should they require it. That I am more than happy to do. And I _do_ want to help people, Frigg—always—but I cannot do so like I used to. These days, it does not do to draw attention to ourselves—you, a goddess in disguise, and me, one half of the last of my kind in Midgard. Your eternal charity is admirable but self-preservation isn’t inherently selfish. Moreover, it does not mean I am indifferent to the suffering of others. Never that. Don't mistake my reluctance for indifference. Times have changed and we have duties to attend beyond our personal preferences. I'm not a hero anymore, fighting against the tyranny of your husband and his ilk. I'm just a woman, or something like it, and a tired one at that. I've done what I can for Kratos. I'm hoping he'll soon be on his way. Shame I can't prophesy every moment of my life.”  
“Enough of this maudlin talk. This isn't like you. I can see, however, that you're not in the arguing mood. Very well. I know you’re at least a _little_ curious about this Kratos.” Freya poured the herb-mash into a vial. “So here, take this cup and mixture and do with them what you will. If you do nothing, you simply have a new cup and some fragrant herbs.”  
“I make no promises.”  
“As I said, do what you will.”

Next day, Laufey was surprised—but far from displeased—that Kratos chose to stay another night. She took him hunting at dawn. “Never seen stag before?” she said as they stalked one, his dappled, cloud-pale coat dazzling in the afternoon sun. A beautiful animal, proud and strong and swift.  
“There were none like these whence I came,” said Kratos.  
Laufey drew an arrow from the quiver at her thigh and nocked it. The fletchings tickled her cheek. “What do you mean?”  
“Hush. Shoot.”  
She shot; the arrow lodged itself in the stag’s bright blue eye. “Your turn. And tell me what you meant.”  
"Once we are finished."  
Within five minutes they tracked down a doe. Kratos felled her with lethal efficiency, an arrow to the heart and a slit throat for good measure. Finally, he said, “They are all brown, like this one, and they do not…glow in my homeland.”  
Long, slim fingers flexed as Laufey heaved the stag upon her shoulder. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where that is?”  
Kratos picked up the doe. “I will not.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who loves vitriol and empathy? I do. 
> 
> Currently warring against my affinity for smut. Won't hold out for long. Teen and up audiences my weak, self-denying ass. Stay tuned, folks.

Laufey piped an air on her flute—sweet, lilting notes of no particular design, which pleased her nonetheless. The same could not be said for Kratos, whose brow was ever furrowing, eyes ablaze, of molten gold. She stopped playing. “Is it my music that upsets you or something else?” she said.  
“Only the medium through which you perform,” he said.  
She retrieved a lyre from the shelf above her bed. “Would this be better?”  
“It would.”  
Laufey sang as she picked out a complex melody. Kratos, oiling his blades and chains by the hearth, tapped a foot in time with the music. He even pursed his lips, as if of a mind to whistle, yet soon thought better of it. “What is it about the flute?” she said, stifling a laugh, fingertips dancing, a blur along the strings.  
“You are the most persistent yet conversely patient woman I have ever known.”  
“A non-answer, if ever I’ve heard one. Very pretty, though. Do please continue.”  
“I have said enough, woman.”  
“My name is Faye. I would have you use it.”  
“I have said enough, _Faye_. It is not in my nature to dwell upon the past.”  
“And yet here you are, dwelling.” Laufey increased the tempo, plucking a tune feral and frenzied. “I’ve let you stay here for five days, forgoing any deeply personal questions, not even as to why you choose to stay—or seem disinclined to leave. You, a hulking stranger, probably strong enough to slay a god, certainly strong enough to pose a physical threat to me. But just because you look like a boor doesn’t mean you must act like one. What about xenia? What happened to guest-friendship?”  
Of anger and anguish, of warring and myriad emotion, his features contorted in a manner most fascinating. She knew she had said too much—but she did not care. She did not fear him.  
Kratos took to inspecting her, ranging from smooth brow to pillowy mouth, to broad shoulders and high bosom, to well-muscled waist and flared hips. “Well?” she said and cocked her head, braids burnished by firelight. His expression suggested he was not a man who allowed himself weakness. Neither beauty nor feeling would move him. For he was assessing her—perhaps as a threat—but certainly not as an object of desire.  
So isolated from the world, time had absconded with the dregs of Laufey’s personal charm. Seduction was the last thing on her mind; intimidation would not work, yet she was listless and lonely enough that she craved deeper knowledge of him, if only because those she had known—save Freya, dear Frigg—were long gone, far away or turned to ash, scattered in the winds of world and time. She wanted a friend, even if it was folly to dream. Looking to the smoke-charred rafters, mind relinquished to oblivion, she played and played and played—battle-songs and dirges and lullabies, sweet little ditties and everything in between.  
A string snapped. Kratos huffed out a breath. “Is it back to fluting?” he said.  
Laufey tenderly restrung her lyre and returned it to the shelf. Beneath her bed was a drum, inscribed with names of the dead. Tattooed hands beat out a slow, haunting rhythm.  
He spoke a few minutes later: “I knew someone who played. She is gone.”  
Laufey nodded.  
“You have lost much.”  
Laufey nodded.  
“I will not ask.”  
“I wouldn’t mind.”  
“Tell me.”  
“Tales of loss are neither interesting nor unusual. But yes, I have lost many and much, almost everything I’ve known to the Aesir gods. Animals of Asgard. Bellicose, unrepentant, cock-sucking swine. Have you heard of them?” Grey almond-eyes stabbed him with their scrutiny. “Yes, I have lost, as have we all.”  
Kratos nodded.  
“As have you.”  
Kratos nodded.  
“Tell me.”  
“My…my wife and child.”  
“I’m sorry to hear it.”  
“I do not need your sorrow, Faye, nor you mine.” His face was stern, leucistic, weather-beaten. He carried himself as a creature of land and sea: a soldier, a sailor, reduced to a vagrant. A man with eagle's eyes—a bird of prey, but a ruined one.  
Laufey struck the deerskin drumhead. Once, twice, thrice. A beat she seldom played. “Carry your weight and you may stay as long as you wish,” she said. “Fair?”  
“Fair.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!

Longevity was not immortality, nor was it immunity. Laufey bled like the mortal she pretended to be.  
Frost flowering in her palm, she pressed a hand to her side. Red drooled from the seams of her fingers. She inhaled through her nose, exhaled through her mouth—slowly in and out, in and out. Since her first encounter with Kratos she had taken to carrying herbs and bandages wherever she went—a longtime practice, yet one previously reserved for long journeys. Home had always seemed close enough. More the fool, she.  
A spell closed the wound. Laufey knew it would reopen at the slightest movement—for her powers of restoration were not nearly as strong as Freya’s—thus magic withdrew honey, yarrow salve, and supplies from her pouch. More red stained her fingers.  
“Shit,” she said, waving her free hand to thread the catgut suture through the needle. The process was long, the stitches clumsy—the pain exquisite—but Laufey was too woozy for dexterity. “Odin’s sagging balls. Thor’s flaccid, rutting cock. Fucking Hel. I’m going to die, right here in the forest, a stone’s throw away from my house, like some ill-fated maid on her first hunt. In Midgard, of all realms!”  
Blood-panic, her family had called it: terror derived from pain—and, as one might surmise, loss of blood.  
Laufey spat on the pile of draugr surrounding her. How humiliating, that such shambling, ungainly creatures should maim her! She was a warrior, born and bred. Laufey the Just, a giantess of once-great renown. Was she simply getting old?  
No, no, not old—certainly not geriatric, despite her years. Her supple, unlined skin could attest to that. But she was losing her touch. The gravest consequence of hermitic living.  
“You are not going to die,” said a gruff, sonorous voice from behind. Kratos rounded her and knelt, snatching up the needle to finish the stitches. There was no way in which a bone stick could weave through flesh pain-free, but his work was swift and skillful, gentle as anything essayed by a trained killer could be.  
She marked him with a gimlet eye. More edifice than man, he was massive, corded, generously layered with muscle. Laufey, for her part, was five-foot-ten, full-figured and built like an athlete; and he loomed, seemed even to grow around her like Yggdrasil, the World Tree itself.  
They were not often in such close proximity.  
Clearing her throat, she pilfered the waterskin from his belt, rinsed her hands, and swilled the rest. Another burst of magic had her feeling somewhat less like the corpses around her. “Thank you,” she said as huge hands cupped her elbows, gently raising her. She leaned on Leviathan more than him, holding fast to worn wood and frost-slicked steel. “Let’s be off. I need to make a poultice.”  
By virtue of her Jötnar blood, she was in finer fettle by the time Kratos bound up her side. Yet though she would heal completely within a few days, Laufey had seen mortals perish of lesser wounds. Hence it was yarrow tea and bandages changed several times a day, furs piled high and hearth kept roaring red and blue and orange. “Were you concerned when I didn’t come back?” she said, burrowing deeper into the furs. She did not run cold but took great pleasure in the softness on her skin.  
“You can take care of yourself,” he said. A pause. “I saw fit to assist in the event that more draugr arrived. You would have been at a considerable disadvantage.”  
Laufey toyed with the wooden cups in her hands—one filled with tea, the other redolent of Freya’s mixture. Her guest-friend seemed not to sense anything amiss.  
By now she and Freya knew what he was without magic’s aid: a demigod of another realm, a foreign pantheon. And Laufey felt his power, whatever magic coursed through his veins, pluck and prod at her own—fire to her ice, dark to her light, by some trick of fate growing stronger with each passing day. Whatever the purpose of Freya’s mixture, it was of little consequence now. They knew what he was. “You were worried,” said Laufey.  
“I was pragmatic,” he said.  
“But you do care! At least a little. At least enough to come looking for me.”  
“I do not.”  
“There’s no shame in it. It’s only natural, given how much time we’ve spent together.”  
“Your armor.”  
“What?”  
“Your armor.”  
“What _about_ my armor?”  
Kratos held up the gambeson. Already worn from years of use, the torso mirrored the wound in her side. “You need better gear,” he said. “You need to be more careful.”  
“As you said—as we both know—I can take care of myself,” she said. “That includes my gear. Come, hand it over.” Laufey sat upright in bed, spread the gambeson across her lap. “Watch.” A flare of light guided an awl to the boiled leather, pricking holes on either side of the tear. She mended it by hand, more lines of neat stitches to criss-cross the garment.  
In her days as an itinerant heroine, Laufey’s panoply had been exquisite, dwarven-wrought with god and silver inlays. Brok and Sindri had forged it to complement her axe. Nowadays, she kept it locked in a chest beneath the floorboards. That armor was hers no longer.  
Kratos came over to inspect her handiwork. The stool at her bedside was comically small compared to his size but still managed to bear his weight. He grunted, a pale finger tracing the loops of thread. Cruelly carven features softened but a hair. “It will do,” he said, hand yet resting on her thigh. Beneath the leather and furs, she could somehow feel the heat, yet not the weight, of his touch, a heat which spread to her belly and well below.  
“When one worries, one cares,” she said. Her hand closed around his. “There is no shame in it.”  
“Stop.”  
“Two months and we’ve spoken of little more than weapons and hunting. We are together for all the day but always apart. It doesn’t have to be so.” Her fingers moved to the coarse black hair on his chin, nudged his jaw, that he might meet her eyes. “You never look at me.”  
“Let. Go. Now.”  
“And what if I don’t? Will you leave? You have nowhere to go.”  
“Neither do you.”  
“You touched me. You’re still touching me. You’re allowing me to touch you. You could forbid it, prevent it, but you don’t. I know enough of you to see that. But what does that say about you, Kratos, my guest-friend?”  
She could not have imagined that he would kiss her at all, let alone kiss her first. It was a savage, firm yet tender thing, which left much to be desired, for he pulled almost instantly away. “This is— _I_ —am not what you should want,” he said and arose, casting her in swallowing shadow. “You do not know me, Faye. Not as you think. Let this end here. Nothing good can come of it.”  
“Kratos—”  
“It is the past already. Leave it there.”  
As she watched him leave, Laufey felt her lips. The heat of him lingered as embers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's see what lies in store for these two...

Laufey was old enough to know her desires and generally wise enough to curb them. Years of isolation—and no small amount of ever-growing paranoia—had only honed her powers of perception. She read humans as she read animals, as she sensed threats and opportunities. The ever-vigilant huntress, who prowled the woods as both guardian and apex predator.  
Kratos had disrupted her ecosystem, thrown her world upside down and out of kilter. Some days she wanted nothing more than to have him gone; others she did not know what she would do without the company. Her visits to Freya were few and far between, for the witch’s protective mark did not long abide on the neck of a Frost Giant, that which the Aesir would seek to destroy. In all of Midgard, there remained one soul she could readily access.  
It did not have to be him. It just happened to be him.  
Laufey lounged in the uppermost boughs of an oak, Leviathan in her lap. The sun threw all in shadow or sharp relief, in cool and bright greens and browns. The wind, fuzzy and sweet with pollen, swept away the winter from her bones. There was no need to hunt. Spring was in full bloom, her stores filled to the brim.  
Kratos had planted himself directly below her, limbs battle-loose, prepared for anything. “What are you doing?” he said.  
“What am I doing? Why absolutely nothing at all.” Laughter bubbled in her throat. “This is when you tell me you’ve never relaxed a day in your life, isn’t it?”  
Not even a chisel to that face could crack a smile. “In Sparta, men are trained as warriors from birth. Even had I wished to relax, it would not have been allowed.”  
Laufey threw her axe. With nary a shift in position, he caught it. “And where is this Sparta?” she said.  
“Far enough away that you need not concern yourself.”  
That he had spoken of his birthplace at all—and without prompting—was enough to stay her tongue.  
Kratos weighed Leviathan between his palms and stroked the rune-inscribed cheek. “This is you, then,” he said, tapping the carven knob, turning the oak woman this way and that. “Your weapon…it was lovingly forged.”  
Brok and Sindri had been fond of her—Sindri beyond the platonic, poor dear—and she of them. Yes, that was love; and if it could be seen, whoever saw it must know something of love, too. “It was,” said the Jötunn, feeling the phantom warmth of small, strong hands—one gloved, one bare and blue—on either of hers. For a moment, her chest ached.  
“Faye?”  
“I’m sorry. Were you saying something?” A breeze tousled Laufey’s braids, the beads chinking with hollow music. “Kratos?”  
He released the axe and it whizzed up and through the air, back to her hand. “I have never seen a finer weapon.”  
“Well, there is _one_ finer…but what about those blades of yours? It seems as though they were made for you.”  
“They were.”  
“You don’t seem very thrilled about it.”  
“I am not."  
“Oh, not this again.”  
“What?”  
"Do let us talk about something else. Hm. I know…” Laufey perked up. Once more she threw her axe, jumping to catch it before it struck the earth, feet landing on soft, yielding loam. She strode a few paces away, then turned. “Let us see how you fare against me in battle, O’ mighty Spartan.”  
Kratos dodged her attack, unsheathed his blades, and sent them flying towards the axe, nearly knocking it to the ground. Leviathan glowed blue as she reclaimed it, suffused the blade with ice. “I do hope you can do better than that!” she said.  
“Stop talking and fight.”  
Chains tore towards her ankles, but Laufey pirouetted and swung, missing one of his pauldrons by a hair, for Kratos had already leaped away. A feint did not deceive him, only drew out something suspiciously akin to a laugh. There were no blows landed, no parries, no counterattacks, for there could be none. To be sure, they were evenly matched, with neither able to gain the upper hand. Swing and dodge, throw and dodge. An endless cycle that lasted for the better part of an hour.  
Thereby Laufey, unwilling to concede a tie, let alone any kind of defeat, sent a wave of magic crashing down, staggering the Spartan just enough to lash the backs of his knees. He fell with a grunt. Laughing, she set Leviathan to his neck. “I have never fought anyone quite like you,” she said.  
“That was hardly a fight,” he said and pushed it away.  
“Don’t be cross. It was just a bit of fun.”  
“We do not fight for fun. We fight to be stronger. We fight to survive. The next time you wish to spar, refrain from cheating.”  
Laufey touched his bicep. “It was a fine exercise in blowing off steam, was it not? More than fine. We should do it again. Ah, but if you can think of any other ways to do so, I’m more than open to suggestions.” Fighting thrilled her, set her blood pumping, roaring. Oft it aroused her. Her wine-red lips parted as she breathed in sweat, male musk, and glowing coals. By the gods, but he was warm, almost scorching hot. Her breaths quickened.  
“Now is not the time, Faye.”  
“And when will the time come? I do not ask of you affection, Kratos. I’ve asked nothing of you in all our time together. Whether that kiss meant anything—to you, to me, to whatever benevolent spirits that watch over us—is now well beyond my concern. That was weeks ago. I have put it behind me, in my way. For what do I care for affection, for romance? I know the look of it. I don’t care for it. But the warmth of a body…that—that is something I should very much like. I have known many men and women, you know, but it’s been a very long time. Do you deny that you find me beautiful, that you find me desirable, that I fight in a way that excites you? For all your stoicism, you cannot hide all.”  
“I…”  
“Yes, I thought as much.” Without another word, Laufey put her lips to his cheek, lingered there a moment, then strode off into the woods.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a bit of angst and internal monologue. I know it's a very short chapter but I tend to post as I write, in short bursts and without editing, always going back to tweak things here and there.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading and let me know what you think!

Light lanced and pricked at closed lids, prizing them open. Wood scraped a back, which curved in a stretch. Long, sky blue-inked limbs unfurled.  
Laufey had sequestered herself in the farthest reaches of her woods, mounted a sturdy bough, and remained till the fall of dusk. Sleep had not been her intention, but the industry of her hand, of late so little employed, had yielded as much pleasure as exhaustion. Her tunic was rucked up to her armpits, the rest of her bared to the world and all within it. Sweat clung cold to her skin. “What a fool you are, Laufey,” she said, kneading the seeds of sleep from her eyes.  
_A fool and a wretch, for what right have you to ask anything of Kratos? He’s made his desires clear. In words, at least. No matter that he kissed you. No matter that he fell into that kiss_ —your _kiss, reciprocated, ardent—if only for a moment. You’re being much too sentimental, old girl._  
_Ah, but when last did you feel such for another? It’s not love, of course—it could not be that, not after so little time—but affection? True affection, for one who chose to eke out a living with you, for one who chose to stay at your side without asking anything in return?_  
_Fárbauti is long gone. You will always love him. You will never forget him. And you will always love, you will never forget the child you made together, the child who departed this life before she could live. Your little Greip, the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, however fleeting your glimpse, your grasp. Your little Greip, your beloved Fárbauti, whose ashes you scattered from the highest peak in the realms_.  
_But enough of that. No point in dwelling, still pining after all this time. Your husband and daughter are at peace. You can mourn them. But you cannot bring them back_.  
_You are lucky to have loved once more. Alva, sweet Alva, who showed you the beauty of Alfheim and her people. You had many years together, years of happiness and contentment, till war claimed her, as sorrow has ever seen fit to claim you._  
_No, no, stop it. Do not go down this path. You cannot lose yourself again_.  
Laufey brushed the wet from her neck and cheeks.  
_Ah, well. As for Kratos, he shows that he cares, in his own way. Perhaps he is even content to stay with you. For he hunts and cooks and cleans, tends to your wounds as you tend to his, spars with you. At night, he keeps to the bearskin by the hearth but accepts the furs you foist on him, even though he runs as hot as Muspelheim, the Realm of Fire. He likes you, though he’d sooner cut out his tongue than admit it._  
_And what he gives you is something beyond, something far more vital than sex. Companionship. Friendship, even_.  
_Yes, he is more than a guest-friend. He is yours. Just not in the way you would have him._  
_And you will not have him_.  
_But this you must remember: you are not alone, Laufey. And that is no small thing._


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just tryin' to pick up the pace a little.

Laufey had hoped to best Kratos in at least one aspect of combat. The bow on his back, like unto a tangle of brambles, had seemed purely decorative, if only because he never used it. Her bow, a gift from Sindri, was of the finest make, oaken, carven with leaves and vines, and not garish in the least.  
Kratos seemed too large, too brutish for such a weapon, for all the archers Laufey had known—herself included—were strong and quick and lean, not hulking, capable of crushing someone’s skull with naught but a pinch of two fingers. But that was what she thought she knew; it did not mean it was so.  
He was graceful with the weapon—careful, patient in a way she neither recognized nor understood in a man such as he. His fingers were as tender as a lover’s, his draw more caress than pull. He shot flaming arrows, anathema to her ice-tipped shafts, and found every target he sought. Laufey was enthralled.  
The Spartan gave her a queer look, cocking and lowering of one of his stern black brows. “Are you well?” he said.  
She clenched her fingers. Slightly overgrown nails nipped into her palms. By the gods, she was a woman grown—old as time, by a mortal’s reckoning, not a girl in her green years. And so, shoving firmly down such thoughts into the fundamentally timid yet lecherous core of her being, she gave him a smile and said, “I’m just impressed, that’s all. We’ve never hunted together. I’ve never seen you…perform, so to speak. And it is quite a thing to see.” She was dangerously close to prattling. Pinched lips and a well-placed hand kept her quiet. For the moment.  
Kratos huffed. It was not a laugh.  
The hand shifted. “Have you no pride in your abilities?”  
“Pride is irrelevant when victory is certain.”  
“And what do you call that, if not pride?”  
“Certainty.”  
It was Laufey’s turn to laugh. A true laugh, full and belly-deep.  
“Do you find me amusing?” said Kratos.  
“I don’t find _you_ particularly amusing. How could I? You’ve got a leagues-long stick up your ass. What you’re _saying_ , however, is something else entirely. Is not certainty derived from pride, under the right circumstances? It’s all right, you know. Your particular brand of it is far from misplaced. It’s only me, Kratos. You need not hide what you are and what you feel.”  
“You speak, you jest as if you know me.”  
Laufey raised a fur-clad shoulder. “Just a little. Only a little. I see no harm in claiming so.”  
“And I see little point in philosophizing. You do not want to know me.”  
“So you keep saying. I’m rather tired of hearing it. In any case, I don’t think you mean it so much anymore.”  
Again, that queer look. “Pride is something I abandoned long ago. I…I am not a good man, Faye.”  
“Perhaps not always. I can see that being the case. But we are the sum of our actions, as the saying goes. And I do believe it. And I do believe that you are a decent man. Or that you’ve become a decent man, if not a good one. For you’ve been nothing but good to me, as I am to you. You know that I don’t need you, Kratos, but I like having you around. And you stay. For whatever reason, you choose to stay. What is your presence here if not a simple kindness to a lonely woman?”  
“But it is not simple. Nothing is so simple as that. And it is not a kindness. You say this as if you worry that I pity you. Is that truly what you think?”  
“Well, do you?”  
“No. No, I do not pity you.”  
“Then do you care for me?”  
“And if I do?”  
“Then I won’t press you. Not just now. See? I’m amenable to your ways.” Turning, Laufey nocked an arrow and sent it towards the bole of a tree, splitting the shaft already lodged deep in the bark.  
Kratos huffed. It may very well have been a laugh.


End file.
